How do we manage consumption wastes from a sink point of view?

The goals set for waste management have changed dramatically during the last decades and affected the evolution of waste management practices and infrastructure. From the early public health approach when it was important to collect the munical solid waste (MSW) efficiently and transport it to a dumping site (sink) outside the city, we have come to a recycling society approach where top priority is given to efficient and maximized resource conservation and recycling of materials. Recycling has, however, its limitations and drawbacks and one of them is the accumulation of harmfull substances when waste materials are returned to use without proper purification. Present indicators of waste management system performance, like recycling rate, global warming potential, or carbon footprint, do not adress this problem at all. For the analysis of the effects of sinks and especially safe sinks, new approaches and indicators are needed. The purpose of this paper is to analyse and discuss the sink point of view in analysing the performance of solid waste management systems. Using as an example classified hazardous waste, hazardous components in products, and hazardous substances in materials, the effectiveness of different technical, economical and policy measures have been evaluated from the sink point of view. The analysis shows that in countries where waste management standards are high, the present way of applying the waste hierarchy leads to higher flows of unwanted substances to uncontrolled sinks. The study also shows that the material flows to different types of sinks could be used as a new sustainability performance indicator for MSW systems. © 2014, Sustain. Environ. Res. All rights reserved.